Conventional railborne freight or passenger carriers waste both time and energy in stopping and restarting at stations for the loading and unloading of people and/or goods. Since most of the load of a train generally remains on board for a number of track sections linking successive stations, the masses to be accelerated and decelerated are often considerably larger than those taken on or to be discharged at any one station.
In my copending application and patent identified above, I have disclosed a rapid-transit system with three parallel tracks including a central track and two lateral tracks, the central track accommodating a continuously running carrier or express train in the form of an endless chain of cars or conveyor sections while the lateral tracks are used by intermittently moving local carriers or shuttle trains of simpler construction. One of the shuttle trains is accessible from a loading platform of a station where it can be boarded by waiting passengers and from which it accelerates to the speed of the express train on the adjoining central track. As soon as it reaches that speed, the two trains dock and the passengers can enter the express train to continue their ride until they approach their destination. At that point the second shuttle train, moving on the other lateral track at the speed of the express train, docks with it to let the exiting passengers transfer to that shuttle train which subsequently stops at an unloading platform of the next station, allowing the passengers to get off.